The reliefs that lined the shrine’s interior walls almost appeared to move in the half-light, their stone eyes following the intruders. Through it all Talasyn’s veins hummed with the golden strings of the Lightweave, beckoning to her as it strained against the veils of aetherspace. However, when they reached the courtyard, all was still, the Light Sever dormant.
The tree that Alaric’s magic had felled a little over four months ago was still there, gnarled trunk cracked like an egg over the stonework. Alaric and Talasyn stared at it, and then at each other.
“They’re called lelak’lete—grandfather trees,” she said, more out of a desire to avoid any discussion of their shared rancorous past, which would undoubtedly lead to another ferocious argument, than a pressing need to tutor him in the finer points of Nenavarene botany. “They’re believed to house the spirits of the dead who weren’t given proper burials.”
Alaric’s silvery gaze wandered to the stone rooftops surrounding the courtyard, chipped and slumped beneath the weight of the grandfather trees that had grown over them in profusions of twisted trunks and gray-green leaves and ropelike aerial roots. “A lot of restless souls around here, then.”
Talasyn cocked her head. “Scared?”
“Not of them. The animals will probably get me first.”
His delivery was so perfectly wry, so patently long-suffering, that she had to bite back a grin, thrown once again by the rare flash of his subtle humor.
They set up camp, which involved little more than dropping their packs and unfolding bedrolls near the sandstone fountain. Supper was a silent affair and Talasyn’s eyes were heavy by the end of it, the shadows of early evening pressing down on her lids, the fatigue that she’d been reining in since morning now let loose, washing over her bones.
She barely managed to stumble to her bedroll, to crawl into it. The last thing she saw before she sank into a deep sleep was Alaric standing by the fountain, head tilted to gaze at the darkening sky above the grandfather trees. At the pale beginnings of the seven moons, and the faint glimmer of the first stars.
“Wake up.”
Talasyn’s eyes shot open. The sky was a bright powder-blue and copious amounts of sunlight were pouring into the courtyard. She squinted against the glare, perplexed. Hadn’t it been evening mere minutes ago?
The fog of sleep cleared. She sat upright, her body groaning in protest, having become happily accustomed to nights ensconced in fluffy pillows and silk sheets atop an eiderdown mattress. There was no one to blame but herself for getting soft, but it made her feel better to scowl at the man who had roused her, anyway.
Alaric’s expression was impassive as he crouched beside her, his shadow sharp on the ancient stone floor. “We have to get started. I let you sleep in a bit because you seemed tired, but we can’t afford to waste any more time.”
“So thoughtful.” Much to her chagrin, the bite that she’d intended to make apparent in her tone was swallowed up by a gusty yawn.
Breakfast consisted of more rice cakes and some alarmingly potent coffee, brewed from grounds that Rapat’s garrison had provided. It smelled faintly like the creamy yellow thornfruit that could clear a room when cut open, but it tasted of smoke and chocolate—and it was so strong that Talasyn’s heart was beating faster in her chest after only a few sips.
Alaric was unimpressed. “This stuff could strip paint from an airship hull.”
Talasyn secretly agreed with him, but principle dictated that she defend Nenavar’s honor. “Does the rustic taste offend your royal sensibilities?” she sniped.
“You’re royalty, too,” he pointed out. “Or has that slipped your mind?”
She blinked. It had slipped her mind, actually. And he was arching one dark brow at her and his sensual lips were curved into a smirk and he was wearing that stupid undershirt—
His smirk widened in amusement as the seconds passed. “You look like you want to kill me.”
“You look like you enjoy it,” she snapped.
His eyes were silver in the sunshine; for a fleeting moment, they held an enigmatic sort of mischief that she would never have believed he had in him, had she not witnessed it before it faded, its glint retreating behind the usual steel and frost.
She leaned forward, some small suspicion taking root. “Do you enjoy it?” she demanded bluntly. “Getting a rise out of me, I mean?”
He ducked his head, suddenly very intent on his coffee, peering into its depths as though it held arcane secrets. “It’s not that I enjoy it, but it’s different. My father’s—my court”— his pale brow furrowed as he painstakingly corrected himself, and he looked so young—“they bow and they scrape. My legionnaires stand on less ceremony, especially Sevraim, as you’ve doubtless noticed. But they are still aware that I am their master. You, on the other hand, don’t fear to truly speak your mind. I find that interesting.”
“I thought you liked me better when I was still afraid of you.” Talasyn couldn’t resist throwing back in his face his declaration from their night as prisoners. Until today, she’d had no idea that she even remembered what he’d said.
“To quote an esteemed philosopher,” Alaric told his coffee, “I say things when I’m mad.”
There it was again, that grin tugging at her lips, unbidden. And, once again, she fought it back. “Well, the next time you wish to be disrespected, you know where to find me.”
The corner of Alaric’s mouth twitched, as though he was suppressing a smile of his own.
After breaking their fast, they took turns washing up in a spring that Rapat had told them was located on the shrine’s grassy grounds, a few twisting corridors away from the campsite. Talasyn went second and, while she cleaned her teeth with a powder of salt and dried iris petals and crushed mint leaves, she reflected on the disturbing camaraderie that she had fallen into with the Night Emperor.
Was it a by-product of the previous morning’s events, an unlikely bond forged by the act of escaping death? Or was it this place, so hauntingly picturesque, so remote that they might as well have been the only two people in the world?
Whatever the case, Talasyn had to admit that it was probably a good thing. She had nearly slipped—nearly lost this long game—when she railed about the Continent rising up and her joining them one day. If she’d already been the Night Empress, her words would have counted as treason. Her temper had endangered both Nenavar and Sardovia, as well as her own life.
She was incredibly fortunate that Alaric didn’t seem to be holding her stormy declaration against her that much.
When she returned to the courtyard, he was sitting, legs crossed, in the shade of a grandfather tree that had sprouted right up against one wall, its branches pushing at the old stonework. Talasyn joined him with some reluctance, dropping down across from him closer than she would have preferred due to the thick, protruding roots taking up most of the space. He smelled like the calam-lime soap from the garrison.
“We’ll focus solely on meditation well into the afternoon,” he announced. “The objective is for your breathing, your magic, and your body to be so in tune with one another that molding the Lightweave into whatever you want—in this case, a shield—will be effortless. Why are you making that face at me?”